Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Daylight Saving Time is Draining the Economy

Daylight Saving Time is more than just the giant butt pain of resetting the clocks twice a year. This annual “Spring Ahead” time change is costing the U.S. economy about $434 million a year. This is based on the lost productivity caused by losing an hour of sleep, and being generally disoriented from having it be suddenly an hour later.If you want the excruciating details you can check out the Sleep Better Lost-Hour Economic Index.NOW can we get rid of this jackassinine time change ritual? WTF is the point of it anyway? I don’t recall EVER hearing somebody say “Oh boy, we get to change the clocks tonight!”I’ve always thought this time change was a nuisance anyway, but it became even more so when they — whoever the “they” is that makes these crucial decisions — started changing WHEN the time change occurs. From as far back as I can remember, Daylight Saving Time started the last weekend of April and ended the last weekend of October.In the spring of 1995, “they” made the Earthshaking discovery that Daylight Saving Time wasn’t starting early enough, so they changed the time of the time change to the first weekend of April. I kept thinking “who makes these decisions” and “shouldn’t these people have something more important to do with their time and our tax dollars?”The reason I remember when the time change change happened: in March 1995 I started doing a much longer commute. Same employer, but they moved to a larger office fifteen miles further away. And this new commute had nightmare freeway traffic that I had previously avoided.Anyway, with my longer gridlocked commute, it was pitch black when I left in the morning, even in March. By the first week in April, there was just starting to be the tiniest glimmer of light when I left in the morning. Then came Daylight Saving Time, three weeks early, and I was commuting in the pitch dark again.OK, nothing tragic or major, but I’m guessing most people have similar anecdotes about what a pain in the ass it is to change the time twice a year. Now that they’re making Daylight Saving Time last longer and longer — from early March to early November — maybe someday they’ll just cut to the chase and make it Daylight Saving Time all the time.Or Standard Time all the time. Whatever. Something where we aren’t dealing with this absurd time change twice a year.